Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..

The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye

Zombies have been done to death — and yeah, that’s a cruelly intentional pun. That said, authors, filmmakers and TV producers keep coming up with new ways to present the same story: the dead rise, want to eat us all and humans must fend them off.

The absurdity of zombie stories is that the walking dead are slow and kinda stoopit, but they’re always able to take a chunk of flesh off faster, smarter, living humans. Which, of course, turns the bitten into a slow, stoopit zombie. Ad nauseum. So to speak.

In that sense, AMC’s The Walking Dead is no different from the bajillion other zombie epics that have preceded it. But this mini-series is based on a graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman that became a cult hit when it was launched in 2003. The series was popular not just because it had excellent zombies, but also because it painted a very realistic picture of how a ragtag group of humans might react to this type of apocalypse.

AMC

Characters from the graphic novel on the left, from the miniseries on the right.

If you liked Battlestar Galactica for the fact that it was as much about politics, religion and societal evolution as it was about humans battling oversexed robots, then The Walking Dead holds promise for you. Can AMC’s producers present the complexity of the graphic novel’s characters on TV? We get a good clue with this first episode.

We get a feel for the creepy factor right away. Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) rolls up on what at first appears to be a major accident — overturned 18-wheeler and beaucoups burned-out cars. Rick walks the area, and as the camera pans around we get see that this is really a campsite comprised of abandoned cars. And, oh look! There’s decomposed body in the driver’s seat of one! Bonus!

Rick gets down on his hands and knees to look under a car, and spots what appears to be the feet of a little girl in bunny slippers. She bends down, picks up a teddy bear, and keeps walking. Rick gets up, watches her from behind and calls out to her.

"Little girl!" Okay, you know what’s coming next, right?

It’s actually Little Zombie Girl, complete with a rigor mortis grimace and half her lower lip gone. She comes charging at Rick, roaring that irritating zombie roar, and he dispatches her coldly with a bullet to the brainpan. We get the obligatory blood-spurt-out-the-back-of-the-head, and Little Zombie Girl drops to the pavement.

At this point, anyone not up for a splatterfest changes the channel. This is going to be some serious zombie violence, and AMC clearly has put in extra orders of corn syrup laced with Red No. 2.

Opening credits, strangely inappropriate commercials, and we’re back in it. We’re now in pre-zombie days, and Rick and his fellow deputy Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) are doing the brother-in-blue bonding thing, talking about women over fast-food burgers and fries in their squad car. Shane complains that his girlfriend – and most women – won’t turn off lights they don’t need. Rick complains that his wife, Lori, thinks he doesn’t care about she and their son Carl because he doesn’t share his feelings. This therapy session and the double-meat burgers are interrupted by a dispatchers request for help apprehending bad guys with guns fleeing in a fast car.

Rick and Shane hit the lights and then the road, helping lay a bed of road spikes in front of the criminals’ car, which of course is a 70s-era muscle car with "The Boss" decaled on the side. Car hits the spikes, all tires are blown, car rolls three or four times.

And, of course, the bad guys come out blazing. Rick’s hit once, taking a bullet in his vest, and everything seems peachy until a surprise suspect crawls out of the car and puts more lead in our hero. Shane gets frantic and weepy, the camera pulls back like a soul leaving the body and … fade to white.

Fade back in to a blurry Shane leaving flowers – in a manly vase, mind you – at Rick’s bedside. Rick’s in a coma, but apparently aware of what’s going on around him. And now he’s away, and immediately looks over to see the flowers are there, but long dead.

Rick tries to get out of bed and, having just come out of a coma that’s lasted many weeks, finds his legs don’t work so well. He falls, calls out for a nurse, and of course none arrives. That’s because they’ve either fled or become professional shamblers.

Still in his hospital gown, Rick manages to get to his feet and starts shuffling through the halls. He looks pretty good for a guy who’s been in a coma. In fact, he even walks over broken glass in bare feet without noticing a thing. Bonus!

This hospital has turned into a house of horrors. The walls have blood on them and bullet holes in them. There’s a half-eaten woman lying on the floor. It’s dark in some places, light in others, and it reminds me of scenes in the most excellent first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead, which is about – you guessed it – a zombie apocalypse.

Most disturbing, though, is a set of doors that have been marked "Don’t open / Dead inside". These doors have been barred, chained and padlocked, but they slowly push apart, and creepy, grayish fingers reach out to fondle the chains.

AMC

Why would you even go near that door, much less open it?

Rick, not heeding the cardinal rule of horror movies, grabs matches and runs into a stairwell which is, as you’d expect, completely pitch black. He lights matches to find his way to an exit, and we’d like to commend the producers for resisting the urge to have a zombie or two claw at his feet as he makes his way down the stairs.

Rick, who appears to be getting over his coma-weakened condition with every new camera angle, emerges into sunlight to find more horrors. There are bodies wrapped in white linen, stacked like cordwood on the loading dock. As he limps down the street, he finds a bicycle, and a zombie girl clawing her way through the grass toward him, the lower half of her body missing, making that nasty sound.

AMC

Cute li’l zombie girl invites you to lunch.

Rick bicycles to his house to find his wife and son gone. At this point, he realizes that Something Really Bad has happened, and his family may not be alive.

"Is this real?" he asks. "Am I here? Wake up!"

He wanders out to the front of his house, takes a seat on a stoop and watches someone shuffling toward him. We also see someone approach from behind, and it looks like Rick’s about to get a zombie schooling. But instead, he’s whacked on the head with a shovel by a young boy, and threatened with a head shot by the boy’s father, Morgan (Lennie James). Dad wants to know exactly what kind of wound Rick’s suffering from. Perplexed and bleeding from the nose, Rick pretty much has no choice but to pass out.

Did I mention this first episode is 90 minutes long?

When he wakes, he’s tied to a bed. Morgan learns that Rick has been shot, not bitten, so he cuts him loose. And here’s where we learn what we need to know to make the rest of the show work.

Morgan explains it all to Rick. The zombies bite you, you get a nasty fever, you die, you become a zombie. The little boy sadly says he’s seen it happen, and you immediately start wondering where mom’s hiding. It turns out, she’s shambling in the street, having become a zombie some time back.

Rick and Morgan spot her in the crowd of zombies outside. They’ve bumped into a car and set off its alarm, which in turn brings more zombies. They like loud sounds, like gunfire, which is a problem because if you shoot one, more come running, attracted by the boom.

Mom, perhaps sensing it’s time for dinner, walks up onto the porch and, in one of the creepiest scenes in this episode, peers through the front door peephole at Rick, who stares back at her. The doorknob slowly turns.

The next morning, Rick, Morgan and the boy (his name is Duane) return to Rick’s house. Rick figures his wife and son are OK, because in addition to clothes being gone, the family photos are also missing. Women, we’re told, grab the mementos when survival is at stake, while men pack their clothes.

Morgan fills us in about Atlanta. The government told people to go there. The military had set up a safe zone, and the Centers for Disease Control are there, working on a cure. Rick decides Atlanta’s the place to be.

But before heading out, they stop by the sheriff’s office. There, hot water is available, and the three take a shower. Guns are also available, and they take plenty of those, too. The only zombie in evidence appears near the end of their visit. It’s another deputy Rick never cared for, and Rick has no problem wasting another half gallon of stage blood on this guy.

Rick rolls in his squad car to Atlanta, while Morgan and Duane stay behind. In other seriously creepy scene, we watch as Rick returns to the spot where he got the bicycle and spotted the half-a-zombie crawling through the grass. This segment is intercut with scenes of Morgan picking off zombies from a second-story window, hoping the sound will lure his wife. In both instances, the men want to put individual zombies out of their respective miseries.

Rick apologizes to half-a-zombie, and Morgan finally gets his wife in his rifle’s sight. Rick has no problem killing his zombie, but Morgan breaks down with his. He watches his wife mindlessly work her jaws through the scope and just can’t pull the trigger.

Next, we see Rick rolling down the highway in his cruiser, trying the radio. He gets no response, but . . . someone has heard him. Shane and Rick’s wife Lori are alive, living in a camp with other survivors, and they try to respond.

Lori wants to go off and find the voice on the radio, because it kinda sounded like Rick, but Shane doesn’t want her charging off. They bicker, make up and – you guessed it – enjoy a nice long kiss to make up. Yep, they’re now lovers, likely figuring that Rick’s become some zombie’s hero sandwich in the hospital.

Rick runs out of gas, and stopping at farmhouse, finds a horse. He might have found a couple involved in a murder-suicide had he actually entered the house, but we only get a glimpse of it through the window. Rick hops the horse and rides it all the way into Atlanta, hoping to get supplies.

Now, you can figure that something’s not right when Rick’s inbound lanes are completely empty, while the outbound lanes are jammed with abandoned cars. Atlanta might no longer be a safe haven, but that doesn’t occur to our Rick, who trots into an apparently deserted metropolis.

There, he comes across a tank abandoned in the street with other military vehicles. And while he gawks, he hears a sound – a helicopter! It flies overhead, and he sends the horse into a gallop after it. He rounds a streetcorner and rides straight into a wall of zombies – hundreds of them.

Ooops.

Now, it turns out zombies like horses just as much as they do humans. The zombies surround Rick and his steed, and pull the horse to the ground. Rick drops a backpack full of guns and ammo on the street. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say the zombies are distracted enough by the horse that Rick has time to crawl under the tank. But the zombies spot it and come crawling after him from both directions. Thinking this is the end, he puts a pistol to his head and is about to the pull the trigger when he realizes the tank has an open hatch on its bottom. He climbs into the tank.

Of course, he’s not alone. A dead soldier is in a corner, and Rick relieves him of a weapon. Unfortunately, it’s a zombie soldier, who starts to rouse. Rick shoots him and is momentarily deafened by the echo. He climbs up through the top hatch to see what the zombies are doing to his former ride, and the undead spot Rick, too. Back in the hatch!

While Rick cowers, the radio crackles to life:

"Hey you! Dumbass!" says what sounds like a teenage boy. "You in the tank! Cozy in there?"

The camera pans back and up, over the tank and the horse, as zombies crawl over both. Absurdly happy music featuring the lyrics "welcome to my world" plays.

Fade to black. Credits.

OK. I’m sufficiently creeped out. I’ll be back.

By the way, if you’ve read the graphic novels on which this is based, you’ll know that this episode is only about a third of the first book in the series. There’s a lot more to go.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..